Smart - Legitimate - Permanent

I'm scratching at the surface now And I'm trying hard to work it out So much has gone misunderstood This mystery only leads to doubt And I didn't understand When you reached out to take my hand And if you have something to say You'd better say it now Cause this is what you've waited for A chance to even up the score And as these shadows fall on me now I will somehow Cause I'm picking up a message Lord And I'm closer than I've ever been before So if you have something to say Say it to me now Say it to me now Say it to me now

The year is 1996 and I am three years into a church start up. I am overwhelmed and distracted. The distraction is a little song that keeps coming on the radio . . . 94.7 NRK in Portland. I interrupt any number of conversations with my wonderful and patient wife in the car so I can get the name of this damn song. For some reason I am completely captured by the ridiculous nature of its lyrics and guitar hooks. It reminds me of a time when music was fun and not dark and depressing (see Pearl Jam . . .which I also loved).

I am driving around in Steve Haley’s new Saturn when this song comes on again. He is a friend and neighbor who dabbles in wikka. He also has been a faithful supporter of our church and our community events. The song comes on again and I ask, “who is this”?. He responds with The Refreshments. The DJ adds that The Refreshments will be playing at La Luna in a couple weeks. We agree to go see them together. Banditos is a catchy tune

What transpires is one part ridiculous and one part brilliant. We go see the show. Steve has a drink or two and Cheryl and I just enjoy the show. Haley does not enjoy it nearly as much as I do. He is in to industrial music. They play their set and we go home. I am hooked. Cheryl had no idea what just began there in this tiny club in Portland. Steve would probably never see them again.

As Steve was very involved in some of the community organizing we were doing, he spoke with another volunteer who was a Christian who attended another church. Steve told him that he hung out with me (pastor) at a bar to this guys horror. The guy asked hesitatingly if I drank beer. Steve being genius and divisive said “yeah, he had a couple beers with me”. This was not true but funny when I heard it. There was a little controversy that ensued people saying this and that about what a pastor should be and do. It was not bad. But what was funny was that I wished I had actually had a beer and I did not. But more importantly I realized I had set aside a love for music and a number of things in order to be a “good” Christian and Pastor.

From that moment I decided that I was going to try and live in freedom regardless of what people would say because sometimes they will talk crap about you when it ain’t even true anyhow. Roger Clyne and The Refreshments intersect at this very moment. It is not that I really believe that he is the best songwriter ever, although he is great. He just happens to be the guy with the genius song and show at a pivitol moment for me. Much like Brian Mclaren’s and Donald Millers book was and Tony Jones’ book will be to a lot of people. Roger Clyne represents spiritual freedom to me. Redemption. And as a ridiculously loyal person, I have been seeing him in every city I possible for the last ten years. As one friend said, “He is a gift that keeps on giving”.

PS

The Refreshments would fade away in 1998 to my dismay as their label lost interest. They were the very band I wish my brother could seen with me as we spent many a day at a rock show together. Clyne and his drummer PH climbed a mountain in northern California (where people go for spiritual clarity) and decided to keep the music going. I lost track of them unitl 2000. I moved in 1999 and got caught up in the pre-emergent life of futile dedication that led to failure. In 2000 they came to Trees in DAllas. I bought two tickets for Cheryl and I and invited Fauss. This would be the first of three Clyne shows Fauss would stiff arm before becoming a committed regular (also of note, it took me 12 months to put the Slobberbone CD he burned for me into my player).

The year was 1991 and I entered my second year of Greek class gloating from the straight A’s from the year before. I was quickly confronted by the chart (yep, this is the actual chart that I have kept all these years . . . ) above and immediately began changing my understanding of how the Bible should be viewed and considered.

Keep in mind that I spent the three previous years to seminary consuming the bible messages of John Macarthur because I fell in love with this idea of understanding what God had to “say” in his good book. For some reason that is probably obvious to some of you, I was drawn by the definitive nature of his teaching. Too bad I had to wait three years to figure out that this definitive teaching style depended on a certain understanding of the bible that I now reject.

Each morning our dear professor (and I mean that . . . he was an earnest and kind scholar . . . I liked him) Dr. Clint Arnold would ask us to give our interpretive understandings of the passages we had translated into the wee hours the night before.He would reply after most (not all) offerings with something like this: “Yes, I could see it working that way. You make a good case for that translation”.At the time I was utterly disappointed that there were so many interpretive options because I assumed that studying the original languages would simply be an exercise of scientific decoding into perfect clarity. Wrong.

Looking back I realize that this was the beginning of freedom for me. Standing outside the good book like a scientist and extracting exact meanings was and is an illusion. The good book deserves more respect than an approach that allows a man to attain some high plain of certainty when in actuality it is a book of faith and should be approached with said faith and humility.

Oh, and my brother died that year. Which allowed me to also experience the occasional genius touches of grace from a few kind students and professors and the ridiculously confusing immediate stoic response from the vast majority: “oh, was he a Christian”?